2001: Matariki A State Odyssey

July 1, 2019

By AHNZ

The Council of Wellington cancelled Guy Fawkes Night, replacing it with Matariki in 2017. The first time out, last year, 2018, the Maori God Tangaroa sent a great tohora into the harbour that prevented it. This year, 2019, the Maori God Tawhirimatea sent strong winds to blow through the city, again postponing Matariki fireworks…

“The advice we’ve received is that the noise from the fireworks is unlikely to cause harm to the whale but that it could cause it to act unpredictably if it is in the vicinity,” Day (acting Mayor) said.”- Whale causes postponement of Matariki fireworks over Wellington Harbour, NZ Herald (2018)

“The council said forecast winds this evening are too strong to safely put on the fireworks display which is held at the harbour.”- Matariki fireworks show in Wellington postponed; Radio NZ (2019)

Given that Wellington City councillors believe in these Maori Gods (or, are at best divided over the reality of these deities) do you think they ought to listen to the omens?

What might the Gods send Wellington next time? Earthquake prone, does Wellington court the wrath of Ruaumoko in 2020 if they do not back down? And what is this Matariki thing anyway?

Pre-Colonial Island Time

Pre-Colonial Maori tribes did each have their own calendars. It would have been understood by the witchdoctors/tohungas of the noble families and imposed upon the slaves. The majority of Maoris were not qualified to know about astronomy or the calender system but only to obey how and when they were told to do so.

A time to dig, a time to plant, a time to shiver in the cold and wait out the season. There was a New Year but we know of no name or the details of any festival celebration to go with it.

Such knowledge has been cobbled together out of ethnographic literature. Contrary to what modern propaganda might suggest, such institutions did not belong to the people but to an elect few. Even for these, the old calendars were mostly lost and disused from the early 1800s when the inter-tribal wars and changing economy rendered them obsolete.

“A lot of people don’t understand Matariki, they realise it is [star cluster] Pleiades, but what it really represents for us,”- Matariki celebrations gear up to depict te ao Māori stories, RNZ

“People” don’t understand because it is not and never was their heritage. What investment do slaves have in the occult divinations of their ancestor’s captors?

Matariki, a Government Program est 2001

Had you asked anyone in New Zealand prior to this century what Matariki was they would not be able to tell you. At best, they would recognise it as a place name or the Maori word for the Pleiades cluster. Thanks to about 20 years of propaganda all our school children now know more about Matariki than about Captain Cook or Guy Fawkes. This is a 180 degree reversal.

In 2001 the Maori Language Commission (using the cover of Te Papa and Ministry of Education least there be any blow-back. Safety in numbers and all that…)¹ decided to bureaucratically conjure an event that never existed. They were apparently undecided about calling it Aotearoa Pacific New Year or Matariki.

Similar words to Matariki occur in most Polynesian languages. Hawaii has Matariki too but the call it something different. “Why,” asks the government of Labour 5.0, “shouldn’t New Zealand get in on that?”

Matariki actually falls on different days according to the different Maori tribes. Much in the same way that they had their own ways and dialects, Matariki is a Psudo-Maori homogenisation imposed on us all as if ‘Maori’ were a monolith. Each individual Maori tribe ought to be allowed to revive their own traditional festivities rather than be subject to the ways (and language) of, say, Nga Puhi in the north. I mention this tribe because they ‘lucked out’ in being proximal to the writer of the Maori dictionary which has come to dominate and indeed be called ‘Maori’ as if there were no other contending dialects/languages.

There is no one Maori language; It’s not a monolith!

There isn’t even one Maori culture or one Maori calendar or even one Matariki.

Government programmes always achieve the opposite of what they set out to do. They tear out healthy living turf that is community and replace it with dead astroturf that is bureaucracy and networks.

Of course as an Anarchist I’m all for the individual and their tribe or social group choosing their own days and own calendar. No need for an all powerful state to dictate when we are to remember, when we are to rest, when we are to celebrate, when we are to mourn. Yet that’s what the NeoMaori Matariki has come to stand for- another attempt to enforce someone else’s values on the population.

Very little to do with Maori Culture or history. Matariki is A State Odyssey from 2001 that is evolving and growing like a cancer. Each year it is propagandised to us the message evolves and changes. The title Matariki has become settled on, it has become more refined lately as a local event rather than a monolith. It has taken over Guy Fawkes Night for some localities now. There are now Matariki Awards being handed out for Maori excellence only, seemingly in direct competition with the New Years Honours as if they were only for white people. Bring on the apartheid?

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Note: Since writing the above (or most of it) in years past I’ve noticed this year (2019) that this criticism has landed. Still a State-driven festivity rather than one from the people. However, in the recent propaganda about Matariki there is now to be found some recognition that there was never one shared calendar used by all the tribes of Maoris in New Zealand.

1 Parekura Horomia speech; Beehive.gov

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